My favourite part of the evening had to be the one-time bulk letting go of everything in my life up to that moment. No explanations, no reasons, no discussions, no blame, no guilt, no shame. Just an acknowlegment that these things happened, that they may have defined who I am up to this point but that they don’t need to from this point forward. It’s like someone saying “you can throw all of your old clothes out and I will give you a whole new wardrobe for free.” Free!! Of course that means I now have to figure out what the hell I want to wear. That sounds like a lot of work. And if I get nice clothes people might notice me. Then I have to make sure I have nice clothes ALL the time. And if I wear nice clothes then I have to wear make-up. And do my hair. Gawd that sounds like a lot of work, can I have my old clothes back?
But I digress – we were talking about me letting go of all my baggage and being happy. Wait, does that mean I have to be happy ALL the time? What if I want a hug, can happy people get hugs? Will people resent me for being happy all the time? I resent happy people now so I assume they would resent me. Maybe it’s better to have people feel sorry for me rather than resent me. Yes, let’s not rock the boat, let’s stay with what I know.
It’s not as easy at it seems to be happy. The thoughts I listed above happen almost subconsciously. It’s my brains way of doing a fast assessment of the situation. And anything unpleasant ‘now’ trumps the possibility of ‘future’ pleasant things. But is my brain right? Does it have all the facts? Or is taking the path of least resistance just an instinct that we developed a long time ago and is not serving us very well in our current society? Like running away from a snake and then realizing it’s behind a glass in the zoo and can’t actually hurt us (earthquake notwithstanding). If a zoo keeper took me into the enclosure and showed me how to hold the snake I would lose a lot of that fear. Likewise if I look at my thoughts and discuss them with a teacher then I might lose a lot of the fear associated with them. Then it might be easier to be happy. Or, you know… just let go…
